Systematic reviews and meta-analysis are techniques for synthesizing primary empirical studies to produce a summary of effects. To facilitate this goal, the Campbell Collaboration (C2) supports reviews within the disciplines of crime and justice, education, international development, and social welfare. At the annual Campbell Colloquium, experts…

There is very little published research specifically addressing the stress management skills of hospice caregivers. In order to ascertain if breathing exercises, biofeedback training, relaxation exercises, and cognitive therapy would be beneficial, pre- and post-treatment questionnaires and six 30-minute treatment sessions were administered to…

Prior research has established that peer tutors can benefit academically from their tutoring experiences. However, although tutor learning has been observed across diverse settings, the magnitude of these gains is often underwhelming. In this review, the authors consider how analyses of tutors' actual behaviors may help to account for variation in…

A reevaluation of a previous study which found a significant improvement in speechreading scores of 15 normal hearing adults following a word-scoring training intervention found that, though subjects increased verbal output and mean length of utterance, they did not improve sentence comprehension, syntactic correctness, or overall response…

Comparison of earnings between control and experimental groups subsequent to participation in experimental training programs provides a credible estimate of program effectiveness. Too much of the nonexperimental estimation of the effects of training programs seems dependent on models that cannot be subjected to powerful statistical tests. (MLF)

The relationship between preferred objects associated with stereotypy, stereotypic behavior, and accuracy of responding during a counting task by a child with autism was analyzed. Teaching with high-preference objects occasioned more stereotypic behavior and less accurate counting than teaching with medium- and low-preference objects. (Author/DB)

This study examined the effectiveness of using "subject-performed tasks" to improve memory efficiency of eight autistic children. The procedure involved instructing children to carry out and later remember a series of actions. The procedure's effectiveness was attributed to autistic subjects' lack of verbal encoding strategies and…

The study evaluated a reinforcement theory of stereotyped behavior with six autistic students (ages 9-16). Three students evidenced decreases in stereotypy and increases in responding in the presence of usual reinforcers, while the other three students required external suppression of stereotypy before increases in responding were shown.…

The role of equivalence class formation in delayed position recognition span performance was examined with three mentally retarded adults. Matching-to-sample training established equivalence classes. In subsequent span tests, subject-produced numeral names led to dramatic increases in span scores. The equivalences provided precursors of verbal…

The article reviews various therapies for hyperactivity including pharmacological and behavioral therapies. The heterogeneous nature of this population suggests that punishment procedures used as part of a behavioral management intervention may be effective in establishing responsible behavior and warrant more research. (Author/DB)

Two profoundly hearing-impaired adolescents received systematic speech training to improve their production of two vowel sounds. Both subjects demonstrated significant changes in their production of the two vowels at the acoustic and perceptual levels following treatment, but changes were highly individualized. (DB)

Procedures are proposed for increasing the accuracy of generalization assessment in applied behavior analysis with behavior problem populations by accounting for the degree of natural covariation between treated and untreated behaviors. (Author/DB)

This study examined effects of cue control and behavioral relaxation training (BRT) with five subjects having severe mental retardation. BRT produced reductions in rated anxiety and improvements in concentration for all subjects. Cue control words were effective only after they had been linked with BRT. (DB)

The study of 20 adult stutterers participating in a 32-hour program of fluency training found that results were consistent with the hypothesis that improvements in fluency during response-contingent stimulation may occur when stutterers access extant fluent speech that is not otherwise being fully utilized. (Author/DB)

This study examined the relationship between productive phonological knowledge and generalization learning patterns in nine phonologically disordered children (ages three to five). Although all subjects exhibited equivalent levels of knowledge and received identical training, three different generalization learning patterns were observed.…